We were just boring lumps about the hotel for the majority of the day on our first and also last full day in Beijing (until we come back after Hong Kong). We were tired from the car ride with Andy the day before and have just been in general pretty busy.
After lazing though, it was time to go to a business dinner with people my dad does business with in China. I won't go into details because I'm not sure if that's rude and also I just totally don't understand them. But these people from a company my dad works with took us out to dinner, that's about all the info you need.
Before heading to dinner we chilled in the hotel lobby for a bit. Which had a holiday drink menu featuring the following item:
Mmmmm liquid snow fungus...
So we drove the the restaurant in Beijing traffic, and it took us 90 minutes to get there. I know this is an absurd amount of time because it took us 10 minutes to get back after dinner. WEEEEE TRAFFIC
Chinese businessy dinners usually take place in a private room. There is a giant table with a giant lazy Susan in the middle and the head important dude spins the table to show and offer everyone the many dishes. I should say the Absurd Oh My God We Are Never Going to Eat That Much Food Not Even In A Week amount of dishes.
See all that? That is just the appetizer course. There were over 5 more courses. Not 5 more dishes. 5 more courses. There were at least 40 different dishes to try. Pictured here are duck tongues (yes, I did eat one, photographic evidence later) Those things in the front that you can see though the glasses are potato goo blobs with berry sauce. There were also marinated cucumbers, duck paté, some salad thing, and duck wings.
The first thing I ate was the duck paté, which was encased in some sort of a flavorless jello shell. I've never had paté, and I can't say I hated it, but the flavorless jello was a turn off.
Ever wanted to know what a duck's tongue looked like? Well now you do. It's a little rubbery thing that has two long scary roots attached to it. You don't eat the roots so biting the meat off is a bit like eating a shrimp and leaving the tail. Below is proof that I ate this thing (I don't care it's blurry, it's proof, so there.)
That's right, bitches. I'm adventurous. There were some more appetizer type things brought out gradually that I don't honestly remember much about. Then a fish was rolled out on a platter.
The vat next to the fish head is lobster soup. The chef took out fish bits, dumped them in the soup, warmed it up and then the soup was handed out to us. It wasn't bad, but it was a super fishy tasting. So we had 3 more soups over the course of this dinner after this lobster soup. That is 4 soups. And they weren't even family style on the table, we all got our own individual soup bowl. 4 times.
Above is a traditional noodle dish from Beijing. A waitress comes around and mixes a different special sauce on each noodle blob. One of the sauces was eggplant and the other was, I have no idea don't ask me. Also there is a lobster head and claw for garnish/there was some lobster meat in there.
While we were eating our noodles and like 10 more dishes were being piled on to the table, this guy came out and started to carve the duck. I'm not sure if it is for show or to prove the meat is actually duck, or a mixture of both, but no one really pays much attention to the dude in the back slicing up a bird.
This is the special duck condiment tray that everyone gets. It includes sugar, horseradish, cucumber, radish, ginger, and some more stuff (not 100% sure about what the other things are). There are a few different ways to eat the duck. They give you a super thin tortilla and then you put the duck meat and some of your little condiments in there and you have a duck taco. There are also super puffy hollow sesame seed things that you can make a duck sandwich with. They are all very delicious.
We complain a lot about there not being dessert here. Apparently we need to stop that. A large plate of carved fruit and mandarin oranges was brought out, which has in the past always been the last course. Then a bunch of little sweet bean and honey cakes were brought out. This was new. Then they brought out the above pictured tiramisu. What? 5 years ago if you said tiramisu to one of the people we were at dinner with they would have looked at you like you were from outer space. Now they love it. It was different than traditional tiramisu, lots of vanilla custard on top with some coffee soaked cake in the bottom. Also those red things are not something we have in the States. Apparently they are hawthornes and they are like little apple/strawberry things that have delicious hazelnutty cream inside. And did I mention they are candy coated with sugar?
Next we journey to Hong Kong Disneyland. Where we will complete our cycle of going to every Disney Theme Park in the world. Yes, we are insane, but we are also awesome.
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